Spooky Saturday - Emelie and why you should never trust the babysitter

It's Saturday!!! And last night I watched Emelie, a 2015 horror film directed by Michael Thelin and written by Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck (DANG). Starring Sarah Bolger in a terrifying babysitter role, Emelie is unlike anything I've ever seen. Let's jump into it!

EMELIE 2015

"...it made her mind crack. It didn't break, it just cracked."

Emelie opens on a young girl walking, talking on the phone to her friend about taking a last minute babysitter job. A car pulls up, inside someone asks her what her name is, and then someone comes up behind her and promptly kidnaps her and drives away. So soon after when the new babysitter is picked up by the Father, Dan, answering to the name Anna, we know this isn't her. And when the parents leave their children with this stranger she begins to terrorize the children in increasingly creepy and awful ways. There's Josh, the oldest and moodiest, Sally, a red-headed high-energy young girl, and the youngest son Christopher with a bad ass teddy bear whose face lights up and I want that?!

Overall the story is pretty solid - Emelie is a young mother dealing with the tragic loss of her own child which she accidentally smothered in her sleep. We learn this through a terrifying story she reads young Christopher referring to her dead child as "young cubby". She then tells Christopher how she's trying to find a new cubby, and soon we realize she has her sights set on him.

Throughout the movie Emelie puts the kids through some terrifying moments including putting Sally's hamster into the snake pen and making them all watch in an ICONIC scene as the snake slowly crushes the hamster. There's an incredibly uncomfortable scene where Emelie lets Josh find her on the toilet and asks him to get her a tampon. She even puts on a home sex tape of their parents and makes them watch it. This movie is so uncomfortable but you can't turn away. There's so many scenes where you almost want to scream but you can't. There was a lot of audible gasping and clutching of my chest.

But once Josh finds out who "Anna" really is and realizes she's trying to steal his younger brother, Josh really steps up. But Emelie puts up a hell of a fight involving some really great cat and mouse type scenes, and some brutal violence. Josh manages to trick Emelie in the end though as she gets more desperate and while the ending is kind of sub par, I wasn't too let down.

What I didn't love about this film though - the story line with the boyfriend. Maybe I totally missed something, but Emelie spends a lot of the film sending texts to this mysterious guy who you only see a side profile of, keeping him updated of what's going on. Then near the end she tells him to basically buy more time before the parents come home so he slams his car into their car and kills himself? Right? Is that what happened? I have no idea. I was super confused about all of this.

Also the film kept flashing back and forth to the parents having their dinner while all these horrendous things are going on at their home but I actually hated this. I get that it's supposed to sort of keep you on edge and show the contrast of both scenes but whenever it skipped back to the parents it was hella boring.

Sarah Bolger delivers one hell of a performance and the kids aren't annoying which is a huge win! You know I can't stand kids in horror movies most of the time but these guys did a great job.

I did love this movie quite a bit. It's definitely an experience. I highly recommend it and if someone could clarify that boyfriend sub-story line please do.

9/10

Stay Spooky!

Spooky Saturday - Get The Girl 2017

First of all, welcome to the first Spooky Saturday here at Horrorbound! Saturday's will be for horror movie reviews. If I watch multiple horror movies in the week, I'll also post a review on Wednesday as well. Look at me....two posts in a row...nailing it!

Second of all, I googled "Get the Girl" to look up info about the movie and I guess I wasn't accurate enough because I just saw a whole bunch of very disheartening articles like "how to get girl to like u (w/ pictures)". But...it also feels kind of accurate for what this movie is sort of about.

So let's jump in:

GET THE GIRL 2017

"I knew, if just given the chance, I'd be the right guy to sweep her off her feet"

Clarence believes in love at first sight because it happened to him with a bartender named Alex. But he's unsure of how to approach her and the first time he does, makes a fool of himself. Alex is currently going through a messy divorce and Clarence watches on as her life slowly falls apart. Clarence decides to approach a known shady guy named Patrick to help him get Alex to notice him. Patrick agrees, once shown a handful of cash because Clarence is of the Duffield legacy, and comes up with a plan where Patrick and some friends will kidnap Alex and Clarence and hold them captive. Clarence will be able to save the day and prove to Alex he's the one for her.

But the team is a hot mess of personalities and Alex isn't going down without a fight. Once someone is killed, everything begins to completely fall apart. And why is the house seemingly empty if Clarence lives here? And what's the real connection between Alex and Patrick?

Overall?

Look, Clarence, played by Justin Dobies, is a creep. Hands down. He's gone to the bar Alex works at every single night even though he doesn't drink just to watch her life. He's approached her twice in all that time. And he assumes that because he's watched her, he knows her. This is wrong and creepy. And yes, in the concept of this movie it turns out he was right - as Alex said, "so you almost killed me to show me I'm alive." But COME ON. Movies like this are what makes articles like the one I found above a reality. You don't "get" girls, that's not a thing. You meet someone and you either fall in love or you don't. There's no magic handbook, there's no step by step guide. You either make a connection with someone or you don't. If at the end of this movie Alex had shot Clarence and said, "fuck off you're a total creep", I would've cheered and enjoyed this statement piece of a movie. But clearly that didn't happen.

BUT...all that aside, let's look at this movie for what it is - a story.

Alex, played by Elizabeth Whitson, is amazing. She never once stops putting up a fight, she's independent, she's smart and she's a goddamn fighter. Which is why the ending of this film is so irritating. Patrick, played by Noah Segan, is charismatically evil and I actually enjoyed his screen time. The group of kidnappers are fun to watch, they're all kind of idiots and clearly have no idea what they're doing. And K.J. steals the scenes he's in, played by Adi Shankar.

There's a couple of twists in this movie that I liked. SPOILERS...............Patrick is Alex's ex-husband and this whole ordeal was coordinated by Clarence to take revenge on Patrick and get him to sign the divorce papers so Alex can be free. I didn't see it coming, I liked it, and it seemed plausible within this implausible movie.

The ending though.....what a cop out. First of all I hated how Alex was all of a sudden like "yes everything you're doing is not crazy and I'm totally falling for you" and I hate that they just cut it off to like...leave it up to the imagination....I guess? DUMB. Dumb ending.

I'm going to give this a 6/10. I was slightly entertained but it came off more as an attempt at a comedy heist than a horror film.

Stay Spooky!